Intro­duc­ing Jen­do: Rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing car­dio­vas­cu­lar health mon­i­tor­ing using machine learn­ing

Keerthi Kodithuwakku is a bio­med­ical engi­neer, the co-founder and CEO of Jen­do Inno­va­tions, a bio-med­ical start­up deliv­er­ing patent­ed health­care solu­tions detect­ing abnor­mal­i­ties in the car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem and seek­ing to pre­vent the risk of car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases.

His strong pas­sion for bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing resist­ed adverse advice from some senior advi­sors in the health­care indus­try about the lack of prospects in bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing in Sri Lan­ka. Along with a like-mind­ed group of engi­neers, he fol­lowed his dream of pro­vid­ing a solu­tion to help solve med­ical con­di­tions. In their research and entre­pre­neur­ial jour­ney, Keerthi said that he found strength and moti­va­tion through the strong sup­port of his wife, fam­i­ly, friends, and cowork­ers in over­com­ing the obsta­cles faced when devel­op­ing Jen­do Inno­va­tions.

AI in car­di­ol­o­gy – A Step­ping­stone for Jen­do Inno­va­tions

The key devel­op­ers of Jen­do inno­va­tions: Keerthi Kodithuwakku, Isu­ru Rajakaruna, and Charith Vithanage found the most amount of inspi­ra­tion towards the end of their tenure in under­grad­u­ate stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Moratuwa. This is when they start­ed work­ing on an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-based device iden­ti­fy­ing abnor­mal­i­ties in the car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem to pre­dict the risk of dis­ease.

Straight out of uni­ver­si­ty, in 2015, Keerthi co-found­ed Jen­do Inno­va­tions with his co-inven­tors along with Hemin­da Jayaweera, and Vin­od Sama­rawikra­ma to com­mer­cial­ize the inven­tion. Keerthi, now 32, said “anoth­er motive behind the for­ma­tion of a reg­is­tered com­pa­ny was to cre­ate a plat­form and pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for upcom­ing bio­med­ical engi­neers in Sri Lan­ka to be a part of the Jen­do Inno­va­tions jour­ney and make good use of their intel­lec­tu­al resources and improve the over­all stan­dard of bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing in the coun­try.”

Car­dio­vas­cu­lar Dis­eases: The No.1 Killer in the World

Car­dio­vas­cu­lar Dis­eases (CVDs) are the lead­ing cause of death world­wide. While man­ag­ing lifestyles and diets can help reduce the risk of CVDs, under­stand­ing the cur­rent con­di­tion of our blood ves­sels remains chal­leng­ing. Exist­ing test pro­ce­dures are inva­sive, expen­sive, and incon­ve­nient, mak­ing reg­u­lar health mon­i­tor­ing dif­fi­cult.

Endothe­lial Dys­func­tion, Dis­ease Tat­tling

Ref­er­ences:

To learn more about Jendo’s jour­ney and suc­cess, check out the fol­low­ing arti­cles:

1. WIPO IP Advan­tage: Jendo’s Suc­cess
2. WIPO Meet­ings: Com­mer­cial­iza­tion Process